Effect of anti-caking agents on flowability of de-icing salts
Winter road maintenance is of great importance in Austria. Its operations last for more than 100 days a year and have the aim of keeping the roads clear of ice and snow and in safe drivable conditions. Society is deeply affected by it, since on it depends road mobility of people and freight during t...
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| Tipo de recurso: | tesis de maestría |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2017 |
| País: | España |
| Institución: | Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) |
| Repositorio: | UPCommons. Portal del coneixement obert de la UPC |
| Idioma: | inglés |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:upcommons.upc.edu:2117/116235 |
| Acceso en línea: | https://hdl.handle.net/2117/116235 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palabra clave: | Roads -- Maintenance and repair Flowability Pourability Auslaufbox Winterdienst Auftausalz De-icing salt Winter road maintenance Carreteres -- Manteniment i reparació Àrees temàtiques de la UPC::Enginyeria civil::Infraestructures i modelització dels transports::Transport per carretera |
| Sumario: | Winter road maintenance is of great importance in Austria. Its operations last for more than 100 days a year and have the aim of keeping the roads clear of ice and snow and in safe drivable conditions. Society is deeply affected by it, since on it depends road mobility of people and freight during the winter period. Thus, affecting the whole country economy as well. From the point of view of road maintenance, it represents from 20 to 40% of its total budget. Environmentally, de-icing agents can have negative impacts on the flora and fauna surrounding roads, besides ground water through filtering of the runoff mixed with de-icing agents. For all these reasons, it is important to optimize the use of de-icing agents and road maintenance operations through all stages, in order to reduce its economic and environmental impact. The mostly used de-icing salt is sodium chloride, being its use regulated in Austria by RVS 12.04.12 and its components in RVS 12.04.16. Flowability of de-icing salt is guaranteed through the addition of anti-caking agents and by keeping a maximum humidity of 0,5% throughout transportation and storage. If this does not happen, and exceeds this humidity level, salt can form lumps, making inefficient and delaying the spreading of de-icing salts. The formation of lumps in salt can have several consequences resulting in delaying or hindering the spreading of de-icing salt. This can cause the winter maintenance strategy to fail, and may increases its costs. Currently the is no particular test for the flowability of de-icing salt. The “Auslaufbox nach Sonntag” is an apparatus designed to test bulk goods that are usually stored in silos. The aim of this thesis is to test the influence of different salt samples containing different anticaking agent amounts and for several humidity levels on the flowability with the Auslaufbox. The results obtained show a direct relationship between the amount of anti-caking agent, moisture and outflow ratio, which would confirm the usefulness of the test to measure the de-icing salt flowability. |
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